Reality is a Harsh Mistress
by ncfan
Summary: And we must work with her as best we can. .: Chapter Twelve: No Breathing Space :.
1. Dead Man Whispering

**POV**: Orihime, addressing her brother**  
Pairing**: None**  
Author's Note**: Hello. I will go ahead and warn you right now. I am not aiming to be eloquent with my poetry, though that may sometimes happen, and I am _not_ trying to make it rhyme, though that may also sometimes happen. I'm not the best poet in the world, and I very much believe in the power of the free-verse. I'm just trying to evoke emotion, which (in my humble opinion) is what poetry should do. The poems in this collection will range from the very long to the very short. If you read this poem below and like it, which I hope you will, please feel free to either wait for the next chapter or check out my poetry oneshots for the _Bleach_ category, _The Plum Blossoms Fly at Midnight_ and _Revenge as an Art Form_. As always, feedback is much appreciated.**  
Disclaimer**: I don't own Bleach.

* * *

_Dead Man Whispering_

In my darkest hours,  
I can still feel you on my back  
Broken, twisted  
Your bones jutting into my ribs_  
_Everyone sees us  
But no one helps us_  
Just hang on a little longer,  
I plead desperately  
There's help just up ahead  
Hang on 'til then_

In my darkest hours,  
Your blood still drips onto me  
Staining my shirt  
And dying my hair  
A deep, deep red  
Your blood seems to come down,  
Like an autumn rain  
Heavy, unrelenting  
Breathtakingly cold

In my darkest hours  
Your voice still whispers in my ear  
Reminding me  
Of how much I still have to lose


	2. Numbers

**POV**: Ishida, addressing his father**  
Pairing**: None**  
Author's Note**: None. Feedback would be much appreciated.**  
Disclaimer**: I don't own Bleach.

* * *

_Numbers_

"Casualties of war," you call them  
And I can not hide shock  
At your voice, dispassionate and cold  
Discounting them both  
Discarding them to the side  
As one would cut away putrid flesh  
It's hard to believe  
That you ever loved either of them  
Or held them dear to your heart

I thought I was used to this  
Thinking that nothing you said  
Could surprise me anymore  
That nothing could leave me speechless  
As I am now

If I die as they did  
Will this be the only way  
You refer to me?  
Will you, detached and wintry  
As you are today  
Refer to me as a figure on a sheet  
Dehumanizing, obliterating  
Something used to objectify me  
And make me less real in your own mind

"Casualties of war".  
They are not numbers  
On a piece of paper  
They were people  
With faces you can not deny  
This may mean nothing to you  
But,  
It means everything to me


	3. The Forgotten Children

**POV**: Rukia**  
Pairing**: None**  
Author's Note**: None. Feedback is always appreciated.**  
Disclaimer**: I don't own Bleach.

* * *

_The Forgotten Children_

Hard-scrabble life  
Taste the dust  
And your own poverty in your mouth  
Coating you lips with its grime  
As night draws nearer  
Hunger grows roaring  
And long in the tooth  
The monster that can not be denied

We march, we fight, we stretch  
Out our fingers and hands  
Imploring to no avail  
Snatching our lives away  
From Hunger and the man with free fists

Autumn comes in a flurry of tawny leaves  
Then winter decked out in snow  
No one looks at the rag-clad beggars crowded like cordwood in the alley  
And traipsing the streets filled with melting snow  
Our skeletons form like twigs and keys  
Fragile things that bend and break  
And do not last the night

And in the winter months  
When icicles grow on the eaves  
Hoshi, a delicate blue-eyed girl  
Small and pretty, all of nine years old  
Tugs my skirt and solemnly says, with her childish lisp and her cheeks chapped red  
"I am going to work with my mother",  
Beneath the grimy West-Side bridge  
I am the only one who cares

We are the beggar children  
Of Inuzuri:  
Servants, beggars, street rats  
Nightwalkers,  
Laborers,  
Thieves,  
Things with no shadows  
That no one ever sees


	4. What No One Remembers

**POV**: Starrk**  
Pairing**: None**  
Author's Note**: Starrk's aspect of death is Loneliness, if I'm not much mistaken. Pay attention when you read the last line. Also, as ever, I would appreciate feedback, in the form of reviews.**  
Disclaimer**: I don't own Bleach.

* * *

_What No One Remembers_

"Power is everything",  
So the old phrase goes  
The more, the better  
And damn the cost paid

But what no one remembers  
Is that it's lonely at the top  
Power brings no happiness  
Carries no joy  
That must be achieved independent  
Of your desperate grasping  
For more, more, more

The other half of my soul  
A child  
Is obnoxious and loud  
She hides all my tea  
And doesn't let me sleep  
And I would be utterly  
Lost without her

A division born  
Out of desperation  
Unbearable loneliness  
Suddenly relieved  
Everything's made better  
But the shadow  
Still casts a sickly pall

So keep your power  
Take your ambition and rot  
Power is something I have  
And neither need nor want  
Because what no on remembers  
Is that it's lonely at the top  
And that loneliness is a sort of death


	5. Feast That Does Not Fill

**POV**: Hollows in general**  
Pairing**: None**  
Author's Note**: For those who have reviewed, thank you very much. Here's my shortest one yet; hope you all like it.**  
Disclaimer**: I don't own Bleach.

* * *

_Feast that Does Not Fill_

Hunger screams like  
Pitch black pain  
Open maws like black beyonds  
Oblivion found in that gentle Hell  
Consuming, devouring, again and again  
We feast and feast but with every bite  
Our hunger, unrelenting, just grows and grows


	6. Self Inflicted Hell

**POV**: Ryuuken, addressing his son**  
Pairing**: None**  
Author's Note**: Ryuuken's thought processes, taken to their logical conclusion.**  
Disclaimer**: I don't own Bleach.

* * *

_Self-Inflicted Hell_

Drive it all away, you say,  
Just as I have driven you from me  
As you stand, cool-eyed and remote  
Trying to keep one step removed from it all  
But ultimately falling into the old trap  
As we pick, stab and bleed  
Ironic, how the things we try to deny  
Our darker hearts, our crueler impulses  
Come to dominate who we are  
As better hopes are snuffed out  
Like dim candles in a windy night

The truth you deny  
And throw back in my face,  
Defiant and nursing the wounds still fresh  
And old alike  
Is that it will not be driven away  
It _can not_ be driven away  
What has happened can not be waved away  
With one negligent hand  
Not even death can obliterate what has passed between us  
Can make it pass on into the night

The truth is one that I know well  
Glaring back at me in faded, blurry glass  
And confronting me in your dark, hazy eyes

I think you know it too  
I'm sure you've felt it clawing at your throat  
Choking you in the darkest of night  
When you can't sleep  
And all you can hear is the sound of your heart spinning  
And all the mistakes you've ever made  
Rushing like the ocean in your ears

But you don't understand  
You understand nothing at all  
I understand  
Take, take, take  
That's what I've done  
You can't see past that  
Can not see anything  
And until you do  
There is nothing I can give

The truth that I know  
And that you have known too  
The truth that keeps us up at night  
Is that we make our own Hell


	7. Snake, Curled Around an Orchid

**POV**: None; third-person. Written about Gin and Rangiku**  
Pairing**: GinRan**  
Author's Note**: Take note that in Japanese, "Ran" means "Orchid".**  
Disclaimer**: I don't own Bleach.

* * *

_Snake, Curled Around an Orchid_

Pale, pretty orchid  
Stretching up towards the sun  
Living any way she can  
And showing her strength in ways unknown

With the pale white snake coiling round below,  
Not to harm but to protect and to shadow  
There is little that can cause her to come to harm

The pretty girl with the golden hair  
Has a shadow that tails her at discreet distances  
This shadow has always been there  
Since day one, when tawny leaves fluttered down  
Over a figure lying on the road

Entwined, interconnected, inseparable  
Bound at the hip  
Always together,  
Never apart

Over years, it wasn't always the same  
But they remained the same  
The pretty girl with golden hair  
And her shadow,  
Close behind

In the end,  
Her shadow he remained  
Her shadow he always was  
And her shadow he will be,  
Unto the end of her days  
Long after his own have past


	8. What I'd Do Different

**POV**: Hinamori, addressing Aizen**  
Pairing**: onesided HinaAizen**  
Author's Note**: I'd just like to state that, perhaps, Hinamori doesn't adore Aizen as much as she used to.**  
Disclaimer**: I don't own Bleach.

* * *

_What I'd Do Different_

The emptiness within me grows  
At each day of our parting  
The cancer left within me spreads  
As I'm sure you hoped it would

Progression of darkness is happening now  
With no kind hand to slow it down  
My thoughts of you are jumbled and swift  
Dark vengeance intertwined with lingering adoration  
And provide no relief

You left me like a broken toy  
Taking out all my parts  
And putting them back wrong  
Wounded, crippled, shattered like glass  
The glass windows of some vandalized church

When the nights grow long  
And unrelenting  
Pressing my thoughts down upon me  
I wish, when I found you that day  
That when I opened my arms  
I had drawn my blade instead


	9. When She Smiles

**POV**: None; second-person**  
Pairing**: Ishida x Orihime**  
Author's Note**: None.**  
Disclaimer**: I don't own Bleach.

* * *

_When She Smiles_

Tip your head up  
Pay a little more attention  
To the world around you

For the first time,  
You are seeing  
That there is life beyond  
The reality you know  
That not all is emptiness, barren and bleak  
That you don't always have to hide  
Or bury what you feel  
So far from the surface

When she smiles  
The whole world seems to light up  
At least in your eyes  
What you see is the veil of cloud  
Being taken off of your eyes  
And for moments you've never had before  
You can see the world for what it is  
And take the ill without losing sight of the good  
Can feel your dead heart beating

Dazzling, bedazzled, withdrawn, volunteered  
You are confused and bewildered  
Not knowing how to make your steps  
Your life is turned upside down and inside out  
Topsy-turvy, the light of the sun is what blinds you now  
Instead of the darkness before  
Everything's different and as foreign  
As the surface of the moon

But when she smiles at you  
You don't care at all


	10. World of Ash and Dust, Burning

**POV**: Aizen**  
Pairing**: None**  
Author's Note**: Just thought I'd touch on Aizen's thought processes, as disturbing as they may be.**  
Disclaimer**: I don't own Bleach.

* * *

_World of Ash and Dust, Burning_

This world, petty and flawed  
Is beneath my feet  
This existence, a cruel aftertaste  
To one who has tasted perfection

Malice sweet and chaos loved  
Have journeyed to my side  
One willfully blind, the other all too seeing  
The loyal man and the viper in the nest  
Both serve my purposes well  
To their own end

I seek to change this world of ash and dust  
Imperfect as it is  
I alone see clearly the reality  
That everything is changing  
And I alone can stop the tide

Everything will be different  
Everything will be better  
Once all see that I act for them  
Once all see that I alone am pure  
Once this imperfect world of ash and dust  
Lies burning at my feet


	11. Eternal Night

**POV**: None; third-person; description of Hueco Mundo**  
Pairing**: None**  
Author's Note**: None**  
Disclaimer**: I don't own Bleach.

* * *

_Eternal Night_

The wind howls, empty and bleak  
Sand and dust swirls around  
The grit finds its way  
Into everything  
And the dust clogs in the throat

Eternal night cloaks the world  
And deep and endless dark  
The dust devils swirl as towers of cloud  
And the Hollows roar into the dark  
As their home shifts around them


	12. No Breathing Space

**POV**: Hisana**  
Pairing**: Byakuya x Hisana**  
Author's Note**: Hisana's experiences with her in-laws, and for once, no Rukia angst.**  
Disclaimer**: I don't own Bleach.

* * *

_No Breathing Space_

They all look at me  
As though I defile the walls with my very presence  
Like I'm something dirty  
Something needing expunging  
A dark stain on their existence

I am always watched  
Watched for some hint of failure  
For my kindness and propriety to flee from me  
So they can prove to he who loves me  
How worthless I really am

There is no room  
In these tiny spaces  
No place to tread water  
No light for violet eyes to follow  
I want to breathe  
But don't know how

Under their scrutiny and scorn  
I smile prettily  
Scrape and curtsy  
And slowly forget how to breathe


End file.
